Over the Counties of Kings and Queens Came the Second Idea Lyrics

After a long night swimming
In the dry dark of a book
I heard outside my window
A sound that changed by window.

Each of the planets unseen sang
As though in the grooves
Of a record I loved.
Saturn, Jupiter, Venus, Mars,

A scratch where the Earth
Where the Earth should be
Where the Earth should be
And is.

I stared out into the darkness
For some sign of the cold consoler,
That perched spinning
Night nurse who tends

To the sleeping sun
Destined to rise irresponsible
Over the counties
Of Kings and Queens.

What are during these
Archaic moments
Of mind-made Shangri-La
But bees trapped in amber,
Storyless and beheld,
By the amber god
Who makes it so
And the living god

Who undoes it?

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About

Genius Annotation

Originally published in The Paris Review. Issue 199 (Winter 2011).

Collected in The Ground: poems (Farrar, Straus and Giroux: 2012).

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Credits
Release Date
June 1, 2012
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